The icon presents all four main personages and the infant Jesus in the hands of Simeon.

The background, which conventionally renders both the interior of the Temple (testified to by attributes such as ciboria) and the city of Jerusalem, makes up a great part of the composition.

Its restrained pastel coloring is subordinated to the somewhat static poses of the personages and is meant to signify the period of heavenly grace around the small figure of the infant Christ; the semantic center of the work.